Physical exercise has become a valuable part of everyday life. This is especially true regarding athletics. Athletes are constantly looking for an edge in an increasingly competitive environment. Success on the playing field or court may mean an athletic scholarship resulting in a paid college education or a career in the professional ranks. Training techniques may be inspired by different activities. Once such activity is the “Strong Man” competitions. In these, a variety of functional strength movements are used to test the strength and muscular endurance of athletes. One example is “tire flipping”. This involves a large truck or tractor tire and a wide open space such as a parking lot or field. The athlete flips the tire by picking up one end of the tire rotating, it to be positioned on the tread and then flipping it over back to the ground.
As primitive an activity as this may sound, it has many advantages. Tires can weigh as much as 1000 pounds, so with a heavy tire, flipping is no trivial task. The movement starts with a driving dead lift from at or near ground level. As the tire is rotated up, the center of gravity of the tire moves closer to the pivot (ground contact positioned away from the user) thereby reducing the load on the athlete. This corresponds to the biomechanics of the athlete as the end movement is a combination bench press/military press where the athlete is less strong compared to the initial part of the lift. Movement from the ground to a throwing movement with the entire body extended follows the body's strength capacity and therefore may be an extremely effective exercise.
One of the disadvantages with the current technology is that the tire must be used outdoors, so weather may be an issue. Tire flipping is not conducive to use in a weight room setting due to space and safety issues of a heavy tire being thrown around. The tire weight is also a disadvantage. The process of progressive resistance is difficult to achieve with a tire as it is very difficult to add or subtract weight from a tire. If multiple tires are used, this adds to the storage space required. For desirable incremental loading of 10-20 pounds where a range of 500 to 1000 pound tires were used, the strength and conditioning coach would need to store and maintain up to 50 different weight tires. This makes tire flipping as a mode of highly efficient training impractical, if not impossible, for most individuals and institutions.
It should, therefore, be appreciated that there is a need for an exercise device that simulates the action of tire flipping and can be safely used in a confined environment such as a weight room and may alter the resistance of the device. The present invention fulfills this need and others.